The monk was a no-show. I was thankful for that, because she's never played before and I think she would be easily distracted and disinterested.
Additionally, I have never tried to wrangle more than three other players at once, and I was faced with six, four of them new.
I didn't miss her. Nothing personal, monk.
We started off with the four pre-established and united PCs making their dawn patrol around the village in search of evil-doers or evidence of evil-doertry in the wake of recent attacks.
While inspecting a suspicious clue, a fifth PC arrived, having last night been attacked by the local nastiness. She got right into it, despite this being her first RPG outing, and her druidy insights helped them put some clues together.
Next, I introduced the last remaining PC, who I was concerned about.
My concern proved valid.
He (not his PC dwarf barbarian, though technically it was sleeping one off when they found him) was thoroughly intoxicated by the time we got to him, and he continued to get increasingly so for the next hour or two. He was loud, distracting, obnoxious, and unfocused in the room, and just shy of belligerent in the game.
It quickly became un-fun for me to DM, because I was baby-sitting. If my attention wasn't on him or something he was saying or doing, he'd start distracting one of the other players. I'd have to interrupt him and try to bring him back into the game, and of course he'd have missed the present context, so we'd have to get him back up to speed, at which point he'd be a somewhat useless pain in the ass, etc.
You get the idea.
I was frustrated and angry. So was the halfling paladin, the other veteran player. The druid was already worn out from a long work week, and she pretty much retreated into passivity. One of the other guys, also tired from work, let the barbarian player get him drinking, and though he didn't get as drunk, he started nodding off regularly. The last guy tried to stay positive and involved, but was constantly distracted.
Unfortunately, I let my hopes for getting everyone together and making it work get in the way of being a good DM.
This guy was making it impossible for anyone but himself to role-play, because everyone else would have just left him behind or killed him or reported him to the authorities. Instead, we all tried to include him and get him to come along, which was totally unrealistic and disintegrated the already feeble immersion I was able to maintain in the tempest of his nonsense.
So we soldiered on. I fast-forwarded a few bits in town to get us on the road to the Citadel. Sadly, the more opportunity to simply role-play (which normally I would encourage ad infinitum) would only prove counter-productive for us at this point.
The first few encounters at the Citadel were sloppy and confusing. The barbarian was steamrolling along in front, didn't know where to find anything on his character sheet (whether he didn't know or was just too drunk to find) and couldn't wrap his gauzy mind around the mechanics.
The druid threw in the towel and went to sleep in another room.
The ranger passed out once and for all.
The barbarian's inebriation seemed to abate a bit. The halfling took the lead, and things started working.
In no time, we were all having fun. Everyone was focused, everyone was role-playing. They discussed choices, made some strange decisions and a few mistakes (if anything can actually be considered a mistake) and had a great time doing it all.
They got themselves into a big unexpected battle with the odds largely against them, but a natural 20 right when the tide was about to turn gave them an edge and they won out. The best part was that they didn't win by brute force, they won by luck and creative strategy, which is what I like to see.
Most everyone needed to lick their wounds after that, so we decided to break there on a high note. The last hour or two of play was a memorable blast that everyone was reliving and recounting gleefully the next morning.
Next time, I won't make the mistake of trying to steer the players into insincere role-playing for the sake of keeping everyone involved.
If the barbarian wanted to play, it should have been on him. Instead, I put it on myself and my players, and the game suffered for it.
The druid may be permanently out of the game after this sour first experience, and that's a real shame.
As DM, that's my fault.
